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Nagy (Hungarian pronunciation: [ˈnɒɟ]) was born in Kaposvár, to a peasant family and was apprenticed to a locksmith. His father, József Nagy (1869–1925) was a manorial servant, a county worker, and was later post assembly worker, and his mother, Rozália Szabó (1877–1969) served as a maid before she was married. He enlisted in the Austro-Hungarian Army during World War I and served on the Eastern Front. He was taken prisoner in 1915. He became a member of the Russian Communist Party and joined the Red Army. Some historians claim that he might have been a member of the firing squad who executed the Tsar and his family in 1918, since one of the executioners was indeed named Imre Nagy.[citation needed]

Nagy returned to Hungary in 1921. In 1930 he travelled to the Soviet Union and rejoined the Communist Party, also becoming a Soviet citizen. He was engaged in agricultural research, but also worked in the Hungarian section of the Comintern. He was expelled from the party in 1936 and later worked for the Soviet Statistical Service. Rumours that he was an agent of the Soviet secret service surfaced later, begun by Hungarian party leader Károly Grósz in 1989, allegedly in an attempt to discredit Nagy.[1] There is evidence, however, that Nagy did serve as an informant for the NKVD during his time in Moscow and provided names to the secret police as a way to prove his loyalty (a common tactic for foreign communists in the Soviet Union at the time).[2]

After two years as Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the People's Republic of Hungary (1953–1955), during which he promoted his "New Course" in Socialism, Nagy fell out of favour with the Soviet Politburo. He was deprived of his Hungarian Central Committee, Politburo and all other Party functions, and, on 18 April 1955, he was sacked as Chairman of the Council of Ministers.

On 1 November, he announced Hungary's withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact and appealed through the UN for the great powers, such as the United States and the United Kingdom, to recognise Hungary's status as a neutral state.[4] Throughout this period, Nagy remained steadfastly committed to Marxism; but his conception of Marxism was as "a science that cannot remain static", and he railed against the "rigid dogmatism" of "the Stalinist monopoly".[5]

Statue of Imre Nagy, facing the Parliament.

When the revolution was crushed by the Soviet invasion of Hungary, Nagy, with a few others, was given sanctuary in the Yugoslav Embassy. In spite of a written safe conduct of free passage by János Kádár, on 22 November, Nagy was arrested by the Soviet forces as he was leaving the Yugoslav Embassy, and taken to Snagov, Romania.

Subsequently, the Soviets returned Nagy to Hungary, where he was secretly charged with organizing the overthrow of the Hungarian people's democratic state and with treason. Nagy was secretly tried, found guilty, sentenced to death and executed by hanging in June 1958.[6] His trial and execution were made public only after the sentence had been carried out.[7] According to Fedor Burlatsky, a Kremlin insider, Nikita Khrushchev had Nagy executed, "as a lesson to all other leaders in socialist countries".[8] American journalist John Gunther described the events leading to Nagy's death as "an episode of unparalleled infamy".[9]

Nagy was buried, along with his co-defendants, in the prison yard where the executions were carried out and years later was moved to a distant corner (section 301) of the New Public Cemetery, Budapest,[10] face-down, and with his hands and feet tied with barbed wire. Next to his grave stands a memorial bell inscribed in Latin, Hungarian, German and English. The Latin reads: "Vivos voco / Mortuos plango / Fulgura frango," which is translated as: "I call the living, I mourn the dead, I master (lit. "break") the lightning."[citation needed]

During the time when the Communist leadership of Hungary would not permit his death to be commemorated, or permit access to his burial place, a cenotaph in his honour was erected in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

In 1989, Imre Nagy was rehabilitated and his remains reburied on the 31st anniversary of his execution in the same plot after a funeral organised in part by opponents of the country's communist regime.[11] Over 100,000 people are estimated to have attended Nagy's reinterment. The occasion of Nagy's funeral was an important factor in the end of the Communist government in Hungary.

The collected writings of Nagy, most of which he wrote after his dismissal as Chairman of the Council of Ministers in April 1955, were smuggled out of Hungary and published in the West under the title "Imre Nagy on Communism".

Nagy was married to Mária Égető. The couple had one daughter, Erzsébet Nagy (1927–2008), a Hungarian writer and translator.[12] Erzsébet Nagy married Ferenc Jánosi. Imre Nagy did not object to his daughter's romance and eventual marriage to a Protestant minister, attending their religious wedding ceremony in 1946 without Politburo permission. In 1982, Erzsébet Nagy married János Vészi.[2]